The Dower Power Hour

If you’ve never heard of Flight of the Conchords, I highly recommend you check them out. They’re a New Zealand comedy band with some top-notch material. My favorite songs are Jenny, Business Time, and Albi the Racist Dragon.

Or: Karl Rove advising Obama on how to beat Clinton. Not surprisingly, his analysis is dead-on.

This post was inspired by this Newsweek article.

Why are we obsessed with the 1960’s? Well, there are plenty of easy answers: the social conflict, the violence, generational divide, the Vietnam War and the clash of values. And yes, we probably romanticize the period a little bit. Ultimately though, I think the real reason we can’t move on from the 1960’s is because we never really reached a new status quo as a nation.

In short, those conflicting values that America was struggling with were never really hashed out. The country couldn’t handle that much tension.  We exhausted ourselves with all the protesting, the violence, the social movements. And not just with the participants. Just like President Wilson’s idealism was rejected by the American mainstream after World War One, so extended periods of drama and idealism inevitably leads people to crave for a “return to normalcy” and stability. That’s a big reason for Nixon’s landslide victory in ‘68. At some point people burn out, just the way the Civil Rights movement did after ‘64.

However, by backing out of the fight before the battle was over, I think American society left itself with some unresolved questions.  If nothing else, the very fact that our national perception of the time varies so much from individual to individual illustrates something unusual about America’s relationship with that part of its past. The dramatically differing views about the 1960’s, some negative and some positive, reflect the divide of the era. We have such a the lack of consensus about the period now and a profound lack of closure.

To quote the closing passage of the Newsweek article (emphasis added):

“So how do we finally escape the ’60s in time for the election of the next president, 40 years after 1968? Not, as Obama would have it, by simply declaring the ’60s done. Too many politicians have tried that before, only to be proved wrong, either by the boomer electorate or their own lingering ’60s souls. The real way to move beyond the ’60s is to have political leaders who are finally willing to do an honest accounting of what that fateful decade was truly about. If the civil-rights movement truly transformed America, why are our cities still segregated? If women were liberated by the ’60s, why do working mothers still feel so chained down? If Vietnam taught us how to be a humble superpower, why are we still bogged down in Iraq? These will all be vital questions facing the next president. The story of 1968 demonstrates that the truly brave presidential candidate will be he, or she, who finally acknowledges the ’60s have everything, not nothing, to do with us..”

I don’t know what strings Barack’s people had to tug in order to pull this off, but kudos.

I had to share this one because it’s super super special. (And because you always hear about all the men involved in sex scandals and never the women.) The female in question is a 33-year-old teacher for mentally handicapped children. This super special woman decided to have sex with one of her 16 year old students… on numerous separate occasions. How did they find out? She was letting him drive her truck without a license. Did I mention he’s mentally handicapped?

And because I’m not a complete cynic: from the people that brought you the “otters-holding-hands” video comes the kissing pandas story.  These red pandas can’t stop making out!  Apparently they’ve smooched twice a day every day for ten months!  Weird.

I felt like my tuition article was a little bit dry so here’s something for the kids. The title really says it all… My favorite part is when the two pedestrians jump in and start dancing with him.

Wow, it’s been over a month since I posted in this thing. I have been extremely busy month- mostly with school and being Student Government President at my college. Which leads me to my next post. I was quoted in the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday on October 23rd, 2007. They interviewed me on Monday and I had a very enjoyable 20 minute conversation with Holly Hacker, the woman who wrote the article. I actually met Ms. Hacker on a plane coming back from a UTSSAC meeting and she overheard Ana (my VP) and I talking about some school policies and introduced herself. Then, a month later, I received an email from her, randomly, asking me to call her back if I had time to give input on a story she was writing. Very cool.

DMN is the local paper in my area so it was pretty exciting for me. You can read the article here. The article was about tuition increases in Texas and how rapid their increases have been since tuition deregulation. Texas went from being one of the cheapest states for higher education to being the 19th most expensive in only a few decades. You can read the article for more info on the what, but I want to give some of my analysis on the “why.” The following is the text of an article I wrote for one of the campus newspapers, A Modest Proposal, explaining my thoughts about the tuition issue as it relates to our school:

[Read more →]

This one is cute; it reminds me of the jibjab video of the Kerry Bush election.  Enjoy!

OK, I’m a guy and even I think these are awesome.

OK, I don’t normally like Michael Moore but I did enjoy this publicity stunt mocking former Mayor Giuliani. As much as I dislike Giuliani’s aggressive, uncompromising foreign policy, I do think he did a pretty good job cleaning up New York City. Those good deeds aside, I thought this video was hilarious. In it, Mr. Moore opens up a Giuliani-themed sex shop in honor of the Mayor’s 60/40 rule in which sex shops must sell 60% non-sex related items in order to remain in business. 60% of Moore’s merchandise is Giuliani themed, the other 40% is sex-related. The overlaps is where it gets really interesting. Go watch.